


Tenderness

by MontmartreParapluie



Category: Turn (TV 2014)
Genre: F/M, tender husband and wife fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 19:42:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6297595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MontmartreParapluie/pseuds/MontmartreParapluie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Selah and Anna come to a better understanding of themselves and each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tenderness

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MercuryGray](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MercuryGray/gifts).



> This was originally going to be part of Chapter 6 of An Idyll in Gunpowder, but the ever-lovely and talented MercuryGray advised me it would stand better by itself as a one-shot. Glad I took her advice!
> 
> To be brief: I've been constantly mystified by the gaps the show leaves in Anna and Selah's relationship. In the pilot he's a defensive, loving husband, but then by the time he turns up again in Battle of Setauket he's a completely different character - and then he vanishes from the plot, never to be seen again. So, insteand of a 'constantly pining for Abe' Anna - here's an Anna who decides to move on and make the most of what she has.

_“The Married state … is the compleatest Image of Heaven and Hell we are capable of receiving in this life.”_

                                    Eliza Haywood, _The Female Spectator_

 

It was nearly dusk by the time the pony and trap had carried the Strongs back to the echoing, red-bricked house on the hill. The house servants hadn’t lit the lamps; but then again, Anna reflected, she and Selah hadn’t been expected back until Wednesday, at the latest. And Captain Joyce took his good time in staggering back from the village, if he wasn’t fit to mount his horse.

Still, it should be attended to. She would have to speak to Abigail about it.

Putting her mind to her work was a deflection tactic Anna often turned to in times of trouble. It kept her sharp and focused when she needed it most. It was a mask she wore when her mind was _anything_ but untroubled.

Seeing Abe (for he could _never_ be Mr Woodhull to _her)_ had been a jolt in the pit of her stomach. It was a sharp ache Anna had sworn she would never feel again. Keep busy. Keep to business; the inn, and the crops; managing the accounts, balancing the laundry and mending of a busy household with the accounts books and under-the-counter transactions Selah  kept with local rum-runners. War had provided ample opportunities for smuggling; and as long as the liquor was good, neither soldiers nor townsfolk cared. As far as she could, Anna had moulded herself into the busy mistress of Strong Manor.  But – seeing Abe – that slight smile…

And Abe with Mary. _Mary_ , with the soft red hair and translucent skin, who carried the bump of her child as serenely as a Madonna beneath her quilted skirts, as _Mrs_ Woodhull…

Anna blinked angry tears from her eyes. It wasn’t longing for children that had caused her so much pain that morning. Truly, if she owned it to herself, it had been hearing of Mary in what _could_ have been her place. Abe might not love Mary, but she was the one who warmed his bed at night. Mary was allowed to sit, heart  fluttering, waiting for Abe to climb the creaking stairs to their room. Mary was allowed to stroke his hair, to kiss him, to reach for that lean body beneath his nightshirt and count the freckles on his shoulders as he covered her throat in urgent, desperate kisses…

‘Annie? We’re here.’

With an effort, Anna dragged her thoughts away, back to here and now. The trap had come to a stop. Selah had already dismounted, slapping the pony’s flank, and held up a courteous hand to help her down.

Anna stared blankly down at him for a moment, as though he was a stranger, before remembering.

‘Forgive me,’ she said hastily, climbing down. ‘I was miles away…’

‘So you seemed.’ A faint, timid smile tugged Selah’s mouth upwards. ‘I like you dreaming, Anna. But you looked… sad.’

Yes, Selah. Selah, her tall true husband: of few words, and, as she had thought until now, all phlegmatic common-sense and propriety. But his words that morning had moved her. Yes, he had brothers, but they were younger. Selah's fine house and farm, the tavern…that was all the firstborn Strong's inheritance.  It was _meant_ to be passed on. Without heirs male, it would be entailed away to his younger brother and his family.

For Selah to say it didn’t matter…For _her_ sake…

On impulse, Anna reached up and gently cupped his cheek in one hand, before standing on tiptoe to kiss him. There was a sharp indrawn breath from Mr Strong; he moved hastily, so her kiss brushed the corner of his mouth rather than his cheekbone.

‘What was that for, Annie?’ he said hoarsely.

Anna dropped her eyes, suddenly feeling a little ashamed that Selah should look so surprised at a voluntary sign of affection from her. He had been courtesy itself in the early days of their marriage. There had always been a polite knock before he crept into the marriage bed, and any disinclination on her part had always been met with in good part.  Their couplings had all but ceased within the first two months; Anna had assumed he was not naturally of an ardent disposition. But the stunned, elated light in her husband’s eyes now persuaded her otherwise.

‘Come, a wife shouldn’t need an excuse to kiss her husband!’ she said lightly, trying to make a joke of it. ‘But…it was a thank you,’ she said. ‘For today. You comforted me, when I needed it.’

Selah’s hands were a little unsteady as he unlocked the front door. He was silent for so long that Anna, embarrassed, had managed to light a taper from the candle-box by the door and was about to apologetically make a hasty retreat. But he found his tongue at last.

‘I would comfort you any time you needed it, Annie,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I hope you know that. That you can give me your confidence...’

It was Anna’s turn for her hand to shake as she held the taper. ‘Selah-’ she began.

Who knows what would have happened if Anna had recalled Abe then? She would have built up her walls, recoiled into her usual steady composure and walked up to the stairs to her own room, closing the door behind her, and their guarded marriage would have continued on its usual course; an uncomfortable purgatory of cold convention.

But Selah plunged on.

‘Let me finish. I know I wasn’t your first choice, but- but we harness well together, Annie. And… I would like us to… I would like you to…’

The pleading expression on Selah’s face said it for him.  _Love me,_ it said. _Try to love me. Learn to trust me._ There is a dreadful sensation of power in facing a man whose entire face and figure tell you he loves you. And for one reckless, unguarded moment, Anna was made drunk by the sensation. She revelled in the electric feeling of being _wanted._

She saw, as though a veil of unhappiness had been lifted, that her _husband_ loved her – and loved her enough for what she _was_ , not what she ought to be. He knew she still had feelings for Abe, and he had respected that. He had allowed her space…

She didn’t answer in words. Anna looked at him, eyes glimmering in the soft yellow light of the candle, and then wordlessly kissed him.

It wasn’t a chaste kiss. It was a desperate kiss, hard, almost frantic; her mouth urgently meeting his, her other hand dragging his head down to her upturned face.

Selah’s hands flew up for a moment; as though caught in surprise, and then folded about her shoulders, crushing her to him; one hand slipping around her waist.

God knows how long they might have stood there like that; two figures entwined in silhouette by the fanlight in the hall. It was entirely possible they might never have gone to bed at all; until the candle spat hot wax on the flagstones.

When they broke apart, both of them were flushed and breathless.

‘The candle…’ Anna said shakily. ‘We should…’

‘Yes…’ Selah shook his head like a man trying to clear his thoughts. ‘I should bolt the door…’

He moved towards the latch.

_What am I doing?_ Anna thought, shaking her head furiously to clear the haze of unthinking desire. It had all happened so _fast_. _Was that simply seeing Abraham again?_ Anna wondered. _Reminding her of what she couldn’t have?_

But  it hadn’t been Abe’s quicksilver looks that had floated before her eyes, the way it used to be in the early days of her marriage. It had actually been Selah as he _was_ …that nervous, quiet-spoken boy in his father's old suit and thrice-mended Sunday cuffs of point lace who used to stand politely at the church gate for her. The one who hadn't minded about the broken engagement, or her father's reduced land. Or the pitiful scrapings of dowry. The memory confused her. 

Selah turned, scarcely hoping that she was still there – and saw with unhappy resignation that Anna had already hastily trimmed another candle and retreated up the stairs to her own room. A whisk of skirt, the creak of a door –

And she was gone.

It had been too good to last long, Selah thought heavily. Ah well. At least she had left the light. Anna cared enough that he wouldn’t break his neck falling headlong from the stairs in the darkness. Sighing, he plucked up the light and went towards his own room – the set of rooms ostensibly used for guests. He had resigned the wood-panelled bedchamber with the great four-poster where his father had slept to his wife. He could at least say then – albeit sadly, and to himself- that she slept in the Strong bed. Even if that bed wasn’t necessarily _his_.

 

* * *

 

 

Although Anna was not abed yet.

She was standing before the mirror, distractedly pulling a faded old wrapper over her shift – and although her eyes were apparently staring at her own reflection, in her head Anna was taking ruthless mental stock of her own life. Weighing and measuring her own actions, with the ruthless eye of a woman who could never lie to herself.

Still wanting Abraham Woodhull was like crying for the moon.  It was burdensome, worthless, useless longing, and she had long known it – but she had still _wanted_ it; it had been proof that the old feeling _had_ been there once. She couldn’t discard the happiness that was.

But… she had never felt weighed _down_ by it before, as she did now. She had become restless; almost _impatient_ with it. If she hadn’t been disappointed by that cruel division of loyalties, she would have tried harder with Selah. Selah deserved happiness; he was a _good_ man.

But she _hadn’t_ tried –

Outside in the passage she heard the gentle click of his chamber door swinging shut. There. He had retired for the night _now_. And she hadn’t managed to voice half the things she’d wanted to say…

Anna turned away in frustration from the dim, silvered glass, still silently arguing with herself.

Maybe it was too late to try for anything better than their wary partnership –

But the moment downstairs hadn’t been that. It had been tender. What she had hoped for from marriage, once.

_I want a marriage,_ Anna thought. _A real marriage, not this cautious, diffident game of hide-and-seek she had been playing for two years. I want a husband who doesn’t look so lost and astounded when I kiss him. I want Selah to **be** a husband. _  

And then, another, softer thought. _I want children, too._ Perhaps some small, stoutly built little boy with Selah’s dark hair, toddling unsteadily about in his gown, leading strings trailing. And then older – a lanky, stick-thin vision of Selah in miniature, idly hitting fence-posts with a stick as he skipped by his father’s side….

Yes, Anna thought with decision. She hadn’t been clear before; but she knew what she wanted _now_. What the future held was up to her.

She took hasty measure of herself in the mirror, pinching her cheeks a little; the old vanities. After biting her lips; carefully, for just the right amount of bloom, Anna slipped out of the door, silent as a wraith, and walked on silent bare feet towards Selah’s door.

 

 

She was half-afraid he would have already been in bed, and she would have had to explain. Anna dreaded that; what she felt went a little beyond explanation.

But the sliver of dim candlelight told her otherwise.

For a man who did much hard labour by himself (and might have been excused a little weariness) Selah was a quaintly fastidious man when it came to personal cleanliness. He always had a filled basin and ewer by his bedside. Anna had forgotten that. He’d stripped down to his breeches and was standing in stockinged feet, tiredly splashing cold water over his face and neck.

She couldn’t help but admire the strong lines of his back as he bent over the bowl; as broad as a maid could hope for, and well-turned from lifting barrels and a thousand other chores around the tavern. He was a little lean, perhaps, not built like some of the rollicking sailor-men, with corded ropes instead of ordinary muscle – but he was a fine man nonetheless. Her father could have picked some old dodderer with white hair and five children already, after all. Selah’s hair was thick and dark, and all his own. His ribboned pigtail stuck damply to the back of his neck from the water, Anna noticed. It curled when it was wet. How had she not noticed that before?

‘Selah?’ she said quietly.

He started visibly at the sound of her voice, turning so quickly he almost upset the bowl of water.

‘Lord, Anna! I thought you were thieves come to pistol me in my bed.’

‘No,’ she said, trying to smile. ‘No-one but me, Selah.’  She was aware, suddenly, of how loose her flesh seemed beneath her chemise without her stays to hold her in. It is only me that stands here.

 

* * *

 

Goodness, was it so hard for him to look at her? He was keeping his eyes down, distractedly wiping his hands dry over and over with his discarded shirt.

It was a situation that might have cowed a less courageous woman; but Anna’s head was still clear. She knew what she wanted. She gently took the crumpled shirt he kept fidgeting with from his hands, her fingers lingering on his wrist.

‘Leave that,’ she said, very softly.

Selah stood stock still as if turned to stone at her touch; but he still couldn’t meet her eye. It was as though he was afraid to look too long on her face.

 ‘I’ve thought on what you said, Selah. And…’ Anna hesitated. ‘I want to be a wife to you. If you’ll still… let me.’

He looked up then; wild incredulous fire in his eyes, as though he could scarcely believe his ears. One great, capable, callused hand moved up to touch her cheek.

‘Annie-’ he said hoarsely. ‘Are you – are you sure you-‘

Anna kissed him again before he could finish; dragged his damp, tangled curls down so his head was close to hers, and stopped his mouth with soft, clinging kisses. ‘Hush now,’ she whispered. ‘Hush. Hush…’

He was hesitant at first. He let her take the lead, although he kissed back with an intensity that both surprised and electrified Anna with that queasy, nervous thrill of suppressed desire; made all the more powerful by the feel of Selah’s bare skin against her own. He seemed a little more vulnerable half-clad; more susceptible to feeling. Anna clung to him more closely, cradling herself against his chest, letting him feel the warmth of her body through her shift as she planted a small trail of lingering kisses in the hollow of his throat.

Selah made a strangled noise that was half-sob, half gasp –and then, unaccountably, they had fallen clumsily upon the narrow bedstead.

Anna was never quite sure, afterwards, if he had tumbled her to the mattress or whether she had simply pulled him over her like a second blanket. It hardly mattered, after all.

They were both, as it seemed, half-mad in the heat of the moment.  Selah’s hands were everywhere, feverishly trying to unloose his breeches, his mouth slowly moving over  her throat, her neck, her breasts (and rather touchingly, her nose, although she wasn’t sure whether that was by accident). Anna clutched him to her, feeling the cool flesh of his back, savouring, with a savage pleasure, the feeling of the muscles bunching beneath her fingers. She could feel his hardness against her, that insistent bulge just nudging against her thigh, and she deliberately rubbed against him; hard and without restraint until he let out a throaty groan and broke free to unbutton himself…

 

It did not last nearly long enough for Anna’s liking. But it had been a long time since their last coupling; too long, perhaps. They were clasped together in one trembling, terrible embrace for perhaps ten minutes before Selah’s urgent thrustings grew more convulsive, less controlled .Then with a great sigh – almost from his whole soul – he collapsed with his head cradled in the crook of her arm.

Anna was still moving in drowsy rapture upon him, half asleep, but still alive to the sense of her own pleasure; until at last she too fell into a great trembling ecstasy and lay still.

In their almost stunned sleep, they lay like felled trees over the crumpled sheets. It half-looked as though they’d been fighting like children, throwing bed-clothes about the room in a fit of argument. But arguments do not usually end as Selah and Anna had.

If anything, they had come to a better understanding of each other.

The past could not be undone, Anna had realised. But there was a future, and a present to be tended to. You could make something from what you had, even if it wasn’t what you had expected, or even hoped for…We harness together, Selah had said. An image better fit for a pair of oxen, perhaps, but it, too, could mean a marriage -- two heads pulling towards the same furrow, the same crop.

 How empty this room looked. Anna had never had cause to remark upon it before. Yet the thought struck her, at least once, before she drifted off to sleep. 

 

* * *

 

‘Annie?’

A gentle hand stroked her shoulder.

Anna’s eyes opened, groggily.

It was already morning. Sunlight was filtering through the shuttered windowpane, making bars of hot bright light against the mattress.

‘Oh, did I oversleep?’ she said vaguely.

‘We both did.’ Selah was half-dressed already. He must have moved very softly. Anna hadn’t even felt him move from beside her. ‘It’s already nine.’

He did not sound _very_ dismayed at the waste of a morning.  Anna smiled into her pillow.

‘I should go into town,’ she said, watching him. ‘If you’re for the fields? I can watch the tavern; I know you said you were seeing to the cauliflowers today…’

‘Mmf.’ Selah was once again the farmer, distracted by the thought of his crop. ‘Aye. I have my doubts about the north field; I’m _sure_ the hands haven’t been hoeing the east corner…’

‘Oh, how very serious!’ Anna put out a hand to him; bending over, he shyly kissed her cheek. ‘Well. Enjoy your ride, Selah. Jordan can take me into town in the pony and trap. I shall be back for dinner.’

‘And I shall look forward to having your company.’ Selah said suddenly.

Anna didn’t say anything for a moment. She looked down absently, one hand absently tracing the pattern of the counterpane.

 Selah bit his lip. He looked anxiously at Anna in case he had been too bold – but she was smiling.

She shook herself with sudden briskness, as though she had come to a decision, and swung her legs out of bed.

‘I have a few things to do before I go, I think.’ She said breezily. ‘I have a good deal to move.’

‘You do?’ Selah frowned, perplexed. ‘What things?’

‘Why, my things!’ Anna saw his stunned expression and laughed, until his face cleared. ‘A wife sleeps beside her husband, after all. It won’t take long.’

‘I could move into your bedchamber…’ Selah ventured.

Anna shook her head. ‘I never did like that bedchamber.’ She reached out and took his hand. ‘We’re making a new start, Selah. Let’s begin it _here._ ’ She looked around the green chamber with a critical eye. ‘Although I can move the damask hangings in here. And the looking glass…’

‘Ah, you begin to talk of mirrors and silk…’ Selah waved his hand in mock-deprecation, a genial grin lighting up his face from ear to ear. ‘I’m a humble farmer, ma’am!  I’m away to my cauliflowers. Move what you please, wherever you please. It’s all yours.’

Before he left, he paused in the doorway.

‘ _I’m_ all yours, Annie.  Always.’

 

* * *

 

Later that day, the Strong servants were much surprised that their mistress did not immediately set off back to Setauket, as was her usual habit. They spent a long day heaving heavy articles of furniture into poky corners of the green room – but, at last, it was done.

Anna was satisfied. All was well.


End file.
